Description
<p>Mary Ann Rocque, widow of mapmaker John Rocque, published this plan of Fort Stanwix in her 1763 <em>A Set of Plans and Forts in America: Reduced from Actual Surveys</em>. British Brigadier General John Stanwix constructed the fort in 1758, during the French and Indian War, along an ancient Oneida trail that connected the Mohawk River and Wood Creek in what is now called Rome, New York. The Iroquois referred to this three-mile portage as <em>Deowainsta</em>. It was a strategic point in a portage along a mostly all water trade route from the great lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. In 1768 Sir William Johnson, the British superintendent of Indian affairs for the northern district, used the fort to host the negotiations with the Six Nations over the boundary line set in the Royal Proclamation of 1763. Later, during the Revolutionary War, Fort Stanwix became a significant point in the Saratoga campaign of 1777.</p>
